Overheard at MozCon

This past week, I attended the 2012 MozCon– After two years of working in the web marketing community, it was the perfect introduction to industry conferences, as I felt like I got something out of everyone speaking as only a few of the their topics were a bit over my head.

MozCon 2012

But despite the wisdom dropped by all the speakers, some of my favorite nuggets were whispered by anonymous members of the 850+ crowd members in passing, at lunch tables, around the lobby, and most importantly, while they thought nobody was paying particularity close attention.

Some of the things I heard were funny, some made me mad, and some made me think; so without further ado, here are the best things I overheard at MozCon:

“I’m in it for the breakfasts and unlimited coffee”

The coffee flowed like wine. Where beautiful minds instinctively flocked like the salmon of Capistrano. I’m talking about a little place called MozCon.

Out of context this sounds innocent enough, but his tone made it pretty clear he was judging her based on how she looked. Sexist guy is sexist. I’m also pretty sure this asshole is just bitter as I bet he feels jealous that more and more women are breaking into the industry daily (we just hired two ridiculously smart women at the Distilled Seattle office). I wanted to dare that guy to say the same thing with The Kate Morris around.

“A line at the men’s bathroom and no line at the women’s bathroom, now you all know how we feel everywhere else”

True. However, if the trend mentioned above continues, the online marketing conference universe will probably balance out in the next couple years

With all the (yaaaaawn) controversy around him and his employer the past three months, it was no surprise his name came up in casual conversation as much as it did; people love that shit.

“Electric blue slacks, bold choice”

Tom Critchlow is nothing if not stylish. If I had to guess, a lot of the reason he won the Head to Head with Rand Fishkin was the choice of his pants that morning; something I am sure he had been planning for months.

“Do you think it’s still worth it to buy up hundreds of domains and 301 redirect them to my site?”

Carson Ward attracts these questions more than any person I know. Not sure what that means…

“We got hit by Panda, then we got hit by Penguin. I’m assuming we’ll get hit by the next update as well”

Probably be a good time to put some work into changing how you go about SEO. I suppose attending MozCon is a step in the right direction.

destroy all the serps!!!

“I bet Matt Cutts is in the robot costume”

That would explain the “Destroy” switch on the back.

“Beautiful day”

Yeah, well, consider yourself lucky.

“I pay $900 for a conference and I can’t even get internet access in the main hall”

While at first this was certainly a frustration, I think it ended up working in most people’s favor in that it eliminated a lot of distractions. What good is a conference like this if the speakers are nothing but background noise? Instead, this lack of connectivity allowed much more focus on the content.

“Nice to finally meet you in person!”

I always enjoy hearing this. In an industry so heavily based around internet communication, there is still value in meeting someone in person as opposed to only email and Twitter communication.